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Topic: SES P1 responses when the SCC opens (Read 25616 times)

P1 to a tree over road has always bewildered me to a certain extent.No matter how fast I rush to that job, if a car is on the road in front of me it (if its going to hit the tree)....

I agree.

I think it is a difference between 'potential life risk' incident (eg tree over road, fire alarm, etc) and 'it is life risk happening now' incident (RCR, vertical rescue, industrial accident, house fire confirmed with person trapped, etc).

Then add the in-between incident types that do/could involve a risk to life like 'land search', 'just started smoldering fire in grass or bush on a low fire danger day', 'smoke detector operating in a house with no other signs of fire & 'smoke in the area'.

In SES, it is the Unit that will interpret the task type & local conditions before lights/sirens are switched on. Not everyone follows the pager priorities to gospel.

Personally, I think lights/sirens are used too much by both services to 'potential life threat' taskings. It does not save you that much time.

Please do not keep slagging people based on pager priorities which is based on pre-determined computer system. Yes, I think some are flashing light/siren crazy. But that happens in both CFS & SES.

Maybe we do need 20+ priority codes so people do not need to think, but I personally would prefer local knowledge to be included.

Real people do interpret the pager information to make a decision on tasking priorities.

So if the SES take the 132500 number, and take a job that is a P1 response who is overseeing that they also respond the fire service ??

There must be some accountability by these guys to ensure the correct response is followed, do we need to embed some CFS / MFS staff in there to ensure that they are playing by the rules, or do we just continue on as we are at the moment and 'trust' that they will do the right thing.

Interestingly on the weekend I observed and overheard on the scanner an SES vehicle responding P1 to a tree down approximately 20 mins away through heavy metro traffic and passing 3 CFS and 1 MFS stations on their way. Closest most appropriate, I don't think so.

So if the SES take the 132500 number, and take a job that is a P1 response who is overseeing that they also respond the fire service ??

There must be some accountability by these guys to ensure the correct response is followed, do we need to embed some CFS / MFS staff in there to ensure that they are playing by the rules, or do we just continue on as we are at the moment and 'trust' that they will do the right thing.

Interestingly on the weekend I observed and overheard on the scanner an SES vehicle responding P1 to a tree down approximately 20 mins away through heavy metro traffic and passing 3 CFS and 1 MFS stations on their way. Closest most appropriate, I don't think so.

Personally I agree & this has already been answered previously in this thread.

Even as someone who has been involved wiht the SES, Sa'streets are rife with P1 responses to trees down from the SES, what seems to be even FUNNIER is that they head out with lights and sirens around 30 minutes after the time of initial page!

Seems to me that if it was that urgent they would have responded a closer service rather than heading lights and sirens across suburbs when there are closer resources who could have a crew there in less than 5 minutes. Similarly after even 10 minutes, if it wasn't urgent enough for them to respond a bit faster its certainly not urgent enough after that amount of time to drive under priority.

I hope the same stern talk applies to other services who act in a similar manner! One can only hope.

try getting SAAS to change their system? The pom who pulls the strings (not the one at the very top of the chain) has so much faith in his system that it's here to stay....despite the fact that we're doing more lights and sirens work than ever before...simply because someone couldn't say "I stubbed my toe" properly without lisping....